Giorno: 16 aprile 2017

The urgency to save soil and their fertility requires action, which can create networks and requires responsibility on behalf of every individual and civil society organizations no matter what they specifically work for. We already have associations taking care of the environment and society: so why should we ask for individual effort and initiatives?

Associations are strong on a local level, but are often isolated when taking action. Although verified and successful, their solutions are often not shared among similarcommunities, in the same nation nor in other parts of Europe.

We must know human beings have destroyed a tenth of natural life on the planet over the past 25 years.

Roads have been a stimulus for growth and development for centuries. They have however had a very negative impact on the earth because of progressive soil sealing. Moreover, the effect goes well beyond the limits of the roads themselves, as they have impact, whether direct or indirect, on forest destruction, pollution, animal life, biological diversity conservation… This is all mentioned by some researchers in an interesting article published on “Science” magazine. We would like to draw your attention to one figure: based on their predictions, the researchers confirm that by the year 2050 roadways will increase by 60% of what they are now. A saying perfectly sums up the situation: “It’s not raining, it’s pouring”. Continua a leggere “Rainscape (a garden for rain along our roads)”→

A) The SEG 2017 Activity Programme has been published and some of the activities are already up and running. A somewhat ambitious, yet achievable programme which requires effort beyond that of SEG members. Here the copy in PDF (in Italian), and we would like to ask you all to read it carefully and let us know which of the activities are of most interest to you. If you wish, you will be put in touch with the specific SEG responsible member.

Even in 2017, World Earth Day will be celebrated all over Italy with a great number of initiatives to raise as much awareness as possible on the safeguard of the Planet. The reason why we are mentioning this is that People4Soil, in this day, will take specific initiatives in Italy. For updates on these demonstrations taking place in Italy please see the Facebook page, Twitter page or write to info@people4soil.eu.

Only a few people are familiar with the European Organic Certifiers Council (EOCC), the association for those certifying and control bodies currently in office and with authority to supervise organic agriculture in Europe.

With roots from 2010, the Council used to be a network of organizations concerned about the implications of European regulations for organic culture on their activities. These organizations subsequently funded the EOCC, a non-profit organisation ‘to increase the reliability of control and certification activities and decisions in relation to European organic agriculture’. Continua a leggere “European Organic Certifiers Council (EOCC)”→

One of the stereotypes regarding agriculture in Europe is that farmers are usually older people that work their fields without perspectives for the future. The conference ‘Access to land for farmers in the EU’ held last December confirmed this data but at the same time indicated the causes for which young farmers have huge difficulties to access land. Let us start from the present picture: 45% of EU farmers are less than 55 years old, and 6% are younger than 35.

The report on the last November meeting has been finalized and sent to all partners. Aside from a summary of the plenary debate, it contains recommendations from the four different themed workshops, of which we here show you the conclusions.

Here the entire original report in English for your reading (a French version is available upon request).